Reaching peace in art: Basic thoughts about diversity in our horrifying times

INTRODUCTION:The Last
Supper! Yes, THE Last Supper (shaam-e aakhar, in Persian) is the title of
a fine work of art I purchased in Tehran and brought with me 2 years ago, on my
way back to the U.S. from a trip I took to Iran, due to the passing away of my
mother. It is a small hand-made Persian rug depicting in exquisite detail, the
Last Supper.

This precious
piece of art is the work of a most likely observant Moslem from the "Holy City"
of Qom, in central Iran.

It symbolizes
for me, in one amazingly "simple" object, the fascinating relationships that
exist among art, spirituality, and peace: Ambiguous relationships at best, given
that even the basic definitions, let alone the lived experiences, of such
abstract concepts are open to infinitely diverse interpretations, in our very
human attempts at "giving" them meaning and discerning their visible or hidden
contexts.

This wonderful
rug-painting has gifted me with a way to explore the integrated essences
of art, spirituality, and peace, which I will try to briefly outline here.

Put simply, the
Last Supper rug is an integrated art product capturing a spiritual situation
about the active desire for profound peace, both internal and external.

I will come
back to this inter-related distinction between inner and outer peace later.

Will I be as
successful as this unknown skilled artist, at weaving and communicating in this
very brief essay how the essences of art, spirituality, and peace are
interwoven? I hope so. I too will do my best.

ART and
SCIENCE: If we agree
that art's essential significance is that it is a reflection or a presentation
(or re-presentation), alas, a deep meditation (consciously or not) on the
awesome desire and ability of consciousness to be conscious of its own
consciousness, then we could perhaps also agree that art is the "science"
of the "subjective," the inner world manifested, in inevitably faithful
subjective exactness, in the outer.

Before going
any further, let me emphasize that here I am referring to GENUINE art and
science the kind not contaminated by the corrupting often destructive influences
of ego, power, and money, because such servile "art" or "science" is not worthy
even of the name.

Now, if science
is an objectiveaccurate description of the WHAT IS of the external
world, art would be a subjectiveaccurate description of the what
is of the inner world-- a text presented to and reflected in the mirror of
the communicable consciousness via the vessel of the individual consciousness.

THE QUESTION OF
VALUE: Now, given
such definitions, if we are to faithfully examine the complex relationships
among art, spirituality, and peace, we need to ask the following crucial
question:

Does the
subjective nature of art "free" it from objective scrutiny, the essential value,
of science, hence abandoning art in the meaningless wasteland of rampant
relativism?

In other words:
Is there an essential "transcendent" value to art, as exists in science? And if
so, how is one to discern and understand such an integrating
value?

The exploration
(and later on the careful discernment, and eventually the proper understanding
of the significance-to-life-and-existence) of this essential
consensually-arrived-at BASIC VALUE inherent to art, is the portal or the
opening through which we may be able to arrive at a possible coherent
understanding of art, as it relates to lived spirituality and eventually to
peace, in our awesome and inter-connected yet humble and increasingly fragile
world.

DIVERSITY, COMMUNICATION, AND
ART: Whereas
science is the evolving key that humans have cobbled painfully together to help
them understand the basic laws, the hidden mysteries, and the infinite diversity
in the sensorial world, of natural and biological forms, art is our
suffering-purified key to experience, to hopefully understand the true
significance of the diversity of experienced consciousness.

In other words,
art is the mirror of the infinite subjective diversity of consciousness, which
reflects (thus making accessible to objective human reality) the infinite
possibilities of communicable inner meanings: The meanings that evolve as
consciousness itself evolves, toward its own infinite manifestations in the
cycle of evolution, in our experienced and inevitably shared world.

In still other
words, art is the awesome clearing through which we can come in actual and
amazing contact, and miraculous communication with, the infinitely diverse
manifestations of inner consciousness, so that meaning and cross-consciousness
communication can be born and evolve toward maturity and experienced (and
hopefully appreciated) wholeness.

Understood as
such, diversity is that essential value that only art can birth into
manifestation: An infinite and lived diversity which is not reducible to unity,
and in fact is as "sacred" as the unity from whose abstract inner womb it is
born, manifesting the amazing outer diversity, which then inevitably keeps
evolving, and in so doing joins the miraculous evolutionary dance of being in
universe.

SPIRITUALITY AND
ART: Such birth and
evolution is also the key to understand the spirituality of art. Why?

Because, the
infiniteness of the diversity of artistic manifestation is the portal to
transcendence, the essence of spirituality.

Rumi advises:
Seek not water, seek thirst.

Why? Because we
are the "separated prisoners" of our consciousness, we seek transcendence,
re-union.

In such
seeking, we experience a maddening paradox. The same paradox that we experience
as we make genuine contact with any genuine work of art--such as our Last Supper
Persian rug-painting.

We know that
this work of art is a product of consciousness (of a fellow human artist), but
we somehow also experience that such art is too a gate to some hard-to-grasp
transcendent reality, a spiritual reality: A reality that is not out there or in
here, but rather maddeningly and paradoxically is in between--and not in between
this and that or here and there, but rather in between "I and I."

PEACE IS THE
GOAL: Why are we born with this insatiable desire to
transcend our limitations? Why are we not happy in our small jail of relative
"I" comfort, even if we have achieved seeming self-actualization?

Rumi says the
reason is our inevitable desire, our never-ending seeking for real peace, for
union with the I beyond I, who is also the limited I but also is not that
I:

The place that Solomon made to
worship in,

called the Far Mosque, is not built
of earth

and water and stone, but of
intention and wisdom

and mystical conversation and
compassionate action. [Emphasis
mine]

Every part of it is intelligence and
responsive

to every other. The carpet bows to
the broom.

The door knocker and the door swing
together,

like musicians. This heart sanctuary
DOES

exist, but it can't be described.
Why try!?

(Rumi, via Coleman
Barks)

Why try?

Because we HAVE
TO.

This trying is
the thirst that we are born with, the sweet jail which constantly compels us to
try, via mystical conversation and compassionate action, to unify I with I, by
our baby-step attempts at understanding the significance, for example, of the
awesome fact (thanks to the Human Genome Project) that 99.9% of all human genes
are IDENTICAL, yet they owe their very existence to the remaining .1% that gives
rise to the amazing diversity that we see in our phenomenal world.

We owe our very
existence to this sacred inter-dependent life-giving dance between our 99.9% and
our .1%, the miraculous dance between unity and diversity, the amazing dance
that gives rise to art, to science, to consciousness, to meaning, to
communication, to transcendence, the loving dance that makes I aware of I.

Do we realize,
however, that (thanks to our advanced "civilization") we live presently on an
Earth in which the rate of the loss of species or sub-species of
micro-organisms, plants, and animals is estimated to be a horrifying ONE PER
HOUR?

Are we
consuming our stupid LAST supper at our ego-isolated table of suicidal
ignorance?

We indeed do
NEED, in these increasingly dark selfish days, to try to do our best possible
dance, on this magic carpet, drunken with the precious humble wine of sober
relatedness, to hopefully transcend from the globally-warming depths of our
thirsty-making limitation jail, toward the liberating hope for a wider wiser
vista: We humans, through the miracle vessel of our amazing consciousness, have
given birth to, and have desperately needed, such mega-institutions as science,
art, meaning, and communication.

In this
process, we have noticed, co-created, and helped to liberate the majestic and
scared diversity that we experience in our profoundly and mysteriously
interwoven inner and outer worlds.

Obviously, here
basic safety, the gift of external peace, is a needed pre-requisite, if we
humans are to be able to safeguard, survive, live in, prosper, and actualize the
potentials that we and our worlds are endowed and interwoven with.

However,
history has witnessed that we humans are not content, solely with the
satisfaction of our biological survival needs, and even with the
consumption-poisoned satiation of our self-destructive prosperity wants.

We are
transcendentally greedy. We desire something more. We desire and we desire.

In fact, we
have no choice but to desire to desperately seek "beyond I" transcendence.

Why?

Because, it is
in trying to satisfy this fundamental thirst, this basic quest in our human
reality, that we encounter our primal desire for inner peace, in addition to
outer safety. This is why Rumi asks us to seek thirst, and not
water.

The what, the
how, the temptations, the yearnings, and the passionate struggles to achieve
this elusive inner peace, at the depth of our true experience, constitutes the
stuff of consciousness, history, and culture.

Whether or not
we have religious faith in the epic of the Last Supper (as depicted,
inter-faithfully, in our Persian rug-painting of a devote Moslem artist), it is
clear that throughout history the medium of art has afforded us, at least
symbolically, the opportunity not only to recognize that outer and inner peace
are clear requisites for one another, but also to appreciate that any experience
of transcendence, of any limitation, physical, temporal, or spiritual, thus any
genuine evolution, is possible only in the paradoxically diverse yet unified
bosom of true peace.

Alas, art is
our mysterious portal to this enchanted land of immortal peace, in which the
bread that we break at supper to feed our diverse bodies and consciousnesses, is
the same bread that unifies our thankful beings.

Is art's
ultimate value, its final sacrificial role, to teach us to be thankful?

About the
author:

A university
faculty in cross-cultural psychology and conflict resolution, Mojtaba
Aghamohammadi (Moji Agha) is a peace and human rights activist, and a bilingual
poet and writer. (www.interfaithful.org)